In December 2018, the Public Health England (PHE) released a short video to prove vaping’s relative safety. The experiment conducted in this video presents a vivid picture of how vaping differs from smoking in impacting human health. It also reinforces the institution’s earlier claims that "vaping is 95% less harmful than smoking."

What's this Experiment About?

In the experiment, scientists used bell jars, cotton balls and rubber tubes to simulate human's entire lung systems. They gave the two jars a same intake of tobacco smoke and e-cigarette vapor respectively. After a while, the two's interiors looked quite different. The smoke "lung" was rampant with black sticky substances, most of which was tar actually, while the vapor one looked almost uncontaminated as how it had been in the first place.

You can check the video below to find more details about this fun and straightforward experiment. In a nutshell, through this video the PHE dispelled lots of skepticism about vape safety at that time. Many rumors and misbeliefs about vaping were also scotched as a result. "However, that was three years ago," you might think.

Admittedly, any research conclusions might turn out to be obsolete with the time passing by. That's why the PHE has been releasing reports on an annual basis to update their reviews on vaping products. All its claims in the reports are based on scientific researches and supervised by the U.K. government. Let's dive in to see the PHE's latest findings in 2021!

Latest Findings from the PHE

• E-cigarette is the most popular quit aid for smokers. In 2020, 27.2% people chose to use vape products as an alternative in the first 12 months of smoking cessation. In contrast, it largely outnumbers the 15.5% who sought help from Nicotine Replacement Therapy (NRT) products, and the 4.4% who used varenicline, a prescription medication.
• In 2017, more than 50,000 smokers succeeded in their quitting with the help of vaping products.
• Substantial evidence shows that the quit rate would reach a summit of 74% when people use regulated medication and vaping products one after another.
• The quit rates show little differences in the group using a vaping product together with prescribed medication (60%), a vaping product alone (7%) and medication alone (59.4%).

Vaping is a Safe Alternative to Smoking

Hypotheses about e-cigarettes' possible harms have gone wild once again recently. Although most of them are unproven, a mind-boggling headline that tries to predict potential vaping harms like a prophet still draws lots of attention. With so loud voices against vaping, many smokers have been misled to believe vaping is as dangerous as smoking. However, the widespread misinformation could possibly end up as a stumbling block to improve smokers' health.

As an alternative to traditional tobacco, vaping is much less harmful. Combustible cigarettes contain at least 250 toxins, among which 69 are known to be carcinogenic. For example, the acetone is one of them, well known for its use in nail polish remover products. The toxic chemicals could bring catastrophic harms to human’s lung, exactly as what we see in the video above. In comparison, the liquid in e-cigarettes that produces vapor for users to inhale is made of much safer ingredients. Vape juices are mainly composed of propylene glycol, vegetable glycerine and flavorings.

There's more evidence to prove the relative safety of e-cigarettes. In 2014, a group of researchers published a paper regarding the toxicity of e-cigarette vapor. This paper involved a thorough study on the content of potential toxic and carcinogenic substances in vaping products from 12 brands. The conclusion was e-cigarettes indeed carry certain level of toxins, but "the levels were 9-450 times lower than in tobacco smoke."

Start Quitting from Vaping

As demonstrated by the PHE's years of surveys, lots of smokers have weaned off their dependence on cigarettes thanks to vape. If smokers combine e-cigarettes with their local support smoking services (LSSS), the chances of quitting for good would go even higher.

"As suggested in previous evidence reviews, combining vaping products (the most popular source of support used by people making a quit attempt in the general population), with stop smoking service support (the most effective type of support), should be an option available to all people who want to quit smoking. 

Local authorities should continue to fund and provide stop smoking services and all stop smoking services should have a consistent approach to using vaping products."

If you've decided to quit smoking, starting from regulated vaping products is a good idea. MOTI provides a wide range of starter kits, through which you can switch to vaping more easily. Disposable vape pens also fit beginners very well for its portability and easy operation.